Goals

The NWSL’s best team confirmed that, yes, they're by far and away the NWSL’s best team on Sunday. The North Carolina Courage captured their second-straight title after thumping the Chicago Red Stars 4-0 in front of a sell-out crowd of 10,227 at WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary, North Carolina.

The partisan crowd roared its side to a 3-0 lead by halftime with goals coming from Debinha, Jessica McDonald and Crystal Dunn. Any chance of a miracle comeback from Chicago was put to rest following Sam Mewis’ header in the 61st minute.

Christian Pulisic hadn’t started a Premier League match since August and many stateside started to wonder why Frank Lampard hates America. Well, Lampard has seen the light shining sea to shining sea and was rewarded with a brilliant Pulisic goal vs Burnley on Saturday. The 21-year-old American added a second as Chelsea led 2-0 at halftime. 

If it’s a Benjamin Pavard goal, you know it’s going to be a brilliant volley. The two are becoming synonymous.

The French defender who scored the best goal of the 2018 World Cup was back at it on Saturday, making perfect contact with a half-volley to fire Bayern Munich in front on the way to a 2-1 win over Union Berlin.

Some big news coming out of UEFA Youth League Group F on Wednesday — perhaps the biggest UEFA Youth League Group F news we’ve ever presented on the hallowed pages of The18: In the group’s early match, 18-year-old American winger Konrad de la Fuente scored two great goals as Barcelona thumped Slavia Prague 4-0. Later in the day, Inter Milan responded to Borussia Dortmund’s early goal with four unanswered, but that Dortmund opener was scored by Youssoufa Moukoko.

Inter Milan revived its hope of advancing to the Champions League Round of 16 with a much-needed 2-0 victory over Borussia Dortmund at the San Siro on Wednesday. Goals from the red-hot Lautaro Martínez and Antonio Candreva catapulted Inter up to second in Group F — three points behind leaders Barcelona — while Dortmund dropped to third.

Barcelona needed everything it could muster to hold on to a narrow 2-1 win over Slavia Prague on Wednesday in the Czech capital, surviving a late flurry from the hosts.

The three points would have been much easier to come by had it not been for a once-in-a-lifetime miss from Barcelona’s No. 10.

Match Day 8 in Serie A confirmed the early trends we’ve seen in Italy: It’s going to be an incredible title race between Juventus and Inter, while it’s going to be another season in hell for AC Milan. However, while those two plot points will dominate the headlines for months to come, a lot of the talk over the next few days will concern the wonder strike that Cagliari’s Radja Nainggolan hit against SPAL on Sunday.

Barcelona had to leave for Eibar a day early due to massive political protests around the city, but the Blaugrana got out of town with an easy three points on Saturday.

MSG all found the back of the net in the same game for the first time for Barcelona, which cruised to a 3-0 victory over Eibar, momentarily leapfrogging Real Madrid into first-place. Los Blancos can surge back into first place in LaLiga with a win over Mallorca later Saturday.